


vanish into the dark

by howlikeagod



Series: our dreams were like fugitive warlords [1]
Category: The Penumbra Podcast
Genre: Canon Compliant, Emotional Manipulation, Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, because boy am i here to deliver, hey! who ordered a bunch of sad traumatized teenagers!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-15
Updated: 2017-05-15
Packaged: 2018-11-01 01:04:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,338
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10911129
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/howlikeagod/pseuds/howlikeagod
Summary: Juno Steel is fifteen years old and has never left Oldtown. That doesn't mean he has nowhere to disappear to.





	vanish into the dark

**Author's Note:**

> remember how Juno used to run away from home all the time and his friends had no idea where he went? also remember how this podcast breaks my entire heart every day?
> 
> title from "Hast Thou Considered The Tetrapod" by The Mountain Goats

“—so all of a sudden, the automaton whirls around with a loud noise, like,  _ ‘wha-pow!’  _ and everyone on the bus is screaming, right, but then the bus driver—”

“Mick,” Sasha doesn’t even have to look at him when she slaps a hand over his mouth, cutting off the story she’s already heard four versions of. “Is that Juno?”

She points across the street. Barely visible through a cloud of hazy red dust caught in the setting sun, the hunched-over silhouette of a teenager is scurrying down the sidewalk.

“I dunno,” Mick says. “Hey!” He bellows, cupping one hand around his mouth and waving the other in the air. “Jay! Is that you over there?”

The kid on the other side of the street stops. He’s in the shadow of an abandoned pharmacy now; if Sasha hadn’t been sure when she saw that shitty coat and even shitter posture, she wouldn’t have had to guess for long. Without the sun in her eyes, she can see his face—in particular, the way his jaw tightens like he’s gearing up for a fight.

Mick, bless him, has never been good at telling when Juno doesn’t want to talk. Sasha considers grabbing his elbow before he can charge across the empty street and get himself in trouble, but thinks better of it.

She wants a word with Juno Steel.

Juno, for his part, drops his eyes to the ground as soon as he sees Mick coming. He’s not getting away that easy, and he knows it; Sasha is barely two steps behind Mick, but without any of his puppyish enthusiasm.

“Jayjay, buddy, it feels like it’s been days,” Mick laughs as he claps Juno on the shoulder. Juno flinches, just a little. It wouldn’t be noticeable if the black eye and swollen lip he had last time Sasha saw him were still there.

“That’s because it  _ has _ been days, Mick,” Sasha cuts in. “Almost a week, actually.” 

Juno opens his mouth, shuts it. Grimaces.

“Wow,” Mick laughs. “Where does the time go, huh? Especially because it gets dark so early this time of year—or, years, since a Martian year is actually almost  _ two  _ Earth years, but we still use the old Earth calendar. Somebody should really do something about that, you know? Oh! Speaking of which, I’m almost late for dinner. Do you want to come, Jay?”

Juno shakes his head. 

“No,” he says, voice small.

“Aww, you sure? We’re having cloned beef stew, your favorite!”

Juno hates Mr. Mercury’s cloned beef stew. It sets his stomach off. 

He doesn’t even start that familiar argument, just shakes his head again. Sasha closes her eyes and takes a deep breath.

“Alright, well.” Mick shrugs. “Your loss. See ya, guys!” He runs off backwards down the street, perpendicular to the fading shafts of blinding sunlight, gap-toothed smile visible long after the rest of his details get blurry.

Sasha and Juno stand in silence until Mick has turned a corner. Simwind blows a discarded wrapper past Juno’s head. He won’t look up at her.

“So?” she says. Juno shrugs. “You missed two quizzes in history and your Trappist oral exam.”

“Didn’t realize you hacked the calendar on my comms.” He’s tensing up again, and Sasha takes a kind of hope from that. When he gets angry, he talks.

“If I had, it wouldn’t do any good. It’s not like you actually keep track of your homework in there.” Juno rolls his eyes, and  _ dammit,  _ now Sasha’s the one getting angry. “And I couldn’t have if I’d wanted to, Juno, since apparently you didn’t have a comms signal wherever you decided to run off to.”

“What,” he growls. Flat. His hands curl into fists inside his jacket pockets; Sasha notices the bulges of his knuckles through the thin fabric.

“I tried calling you.” She crosses her arms. “Is that so surprising?”

Juno whips his head up to finally look her in the eye.

“So I ran away again, so what?” he snarls. “Why is it such a goddamn big deal to you that I missed my Trappist test or whatever? You think I wouldn’t rather be in that dumb block of concrete they call a school than—” His voice breaks.

Good. He’s pissed. She can use that.

“Than where, Juno? Than  _ where?  _ Because I can’t imagine whatever you’re doing when you get like this is doing you any good—”

“When I  _ ‘get like this?’”  _ He’s practically shouting. If there were anyone within two blocks who could possibly give a shit, Sasha might be worried. “I’m not the problem here, Sasha! You  _ know  _ that, you know what she—”

“I know.” Sasha sharpens two words like the point of a knife and stabs them through Juno before he can get himself too worked up. His face is getting flushed, and if she makes him cry in public she’ll lose him entirely. “I don’t mean why you ran _away,_ Juno. I mean what you could be running _to.”_

Juno blinks a half dozen times. 

“I… What?”

“Running away doesn’t mean you have to disappear,” she says. She’s going for gentle, now; corner him like a scared animal and coax him out again. “Mick’s dad loves you—”

Juno scoffs.

“Mick’s got too much of his dad in him. They’re both more generous than anyone with half a brain should be. I won’t be the one who takes advantage of that.”

Sasha elects not to try and teach him the difference between taking advantage and a gift freely offered; he’ll have enough new information to catch up on when he goes back to school.

“There’s always my place,” Sasha says instead. Juno freezes.

“Are you joking?” he asks slowly. “I can’t ever look your mom in the eye again, not—” He swerves off this line of thinking when he sees the look on Sasha’s face. It’s been two years,  _ more  _ than two years, they should all have moved past this by now—

Sasha feels off balance, suddenly. She can’t quite grab a hold of the next step in her plan, caught up in shoving down memories and trauma and loss all at once, so she blurts the first thing that comes to mind.

“You have responsibilities here.” Their argument is something solid to stand on. “Running off, never telling anyone where you are or when you’ll be back, that doesn’t fix a single thing.”

“Oh, this again.” Juno seems almost relieved to be able to get angry again. Sasha would be lying if she said she felt differently. “Telling me I have to graduate  _ or else.  _ You know something, Sasha, some of us have bigger things to think about than getting a little piece of paper that says we jumped through all the right hoops and filled in all the right test bubbles—”

“Your responsibilities aren’t just to yourself, Juno.” The two of them are running headlong toward something, Sasha can feel it. “Not everything is about you.”

It doesn’t feel good.

“I know that, I—”

Sasha doesn’t stop. 

“Mick and I want our friend to act like he cares about us now and then, sure, but we’re big kids. We can take care of ourselves. You know who  _ actually  _ needs you?” She spits the words out before she even thinks them through; not Sasha Wire’s proudest moment, when she looks back on it later. “Your brother. Did you even think about Ben? Don’t go where he can’t follow.”

Sasha would say Juno looks like he’s been slapped, but she’s definitely slapped him before and never has he looked quite like  _ that. _

“I…” All the air deflates from Juno in an instant. “Okay.”

“Juno, wait, I didn’t mean—”

“I’ll see you around, Sasha.” Juno walks away, shoulders up around his ears. He’s short for his age, always has been, but right now Juno looks impossibly small.

Something must be wrong with the shields again, because the wind that blows past Sasha as she walks home feels colder than the atmospheric regulation should allow. Par for the course, in Oldtown.


End file.
